Although not strictly legal we thought this press release a very interesting little insight into the world of professional publishing and its increasingly decentralized and outsourced future
Will we see in a few years a few mini offices in London, New York, The Hague etc where there’ll be? a smattering of political middle and senior management (what’s the point of legal publishing without the daily political grind) and then the most important department .. those who oversee the BPO aspect of the business in India and increasingly in China and parts of South America…maybe even Africa
Apart from the BPO president and underlings the rest of the western employees will become ever more expensive window dressing while all the work is actually processed overseas. Editorial, data content and management, content distribution.. the odd print run and we should imagine most sales and marketing can also be centralized in places like India?? ..with an ever more reduced sales staff concentrating on getting new clients rather than serving the existing client base.
These rather annoying people like legal KM’s and librarians can be placated with the odd coffee morning and conference sponsorship
Here at HOB we think it’s little announcements like the following which pressage the not too distant future described above..
(October 5, 2009) – Wolters Kluwer, a market-leading global information services and publishing company focused on professionals, announced today the appointment of Punnika Kharas as Executive Vice President, Global Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) & Sourcing, effective immediately.
In this newly created role, Ms. Kharas will be focusing on the harmonization of business process and data models in the areas of sourcing, process standardization, and off-shoring to guide Wolters Kluwer’s simplification and productivity objectives.
Ms. Kharas was previously Global Business Process Owner for Wolters Kluwer as of January 2009, supporting the organization’s Springboard program. She joined Wolters Kluwer in 2001 as Chief Financial Officer of the Legal, Tax & Regulatory Europe division. Prior to that Ms. Kharas was Finance Director Customer Services Division EMEA at Compaq. She had gained broad experience in several management positions in financial and planning & analysis functions for the European, the Middle East, and African markets at various companies, including Digital Equipment and Borg Warner Chemicals.
T
om Lesica, CEO Global Shared Services for Wolters Kluwer, said, “In support of strengthening the worldwide implementation of Global Shared Services (GSS) at Wolters Kluwer, the GSS group will be able to benefit from Punnika’s rich international business experience and knowledge about our industry and company. We are very pleased that Punnika and her team will continue to partner with business leaders throughout Wolters Kluwer to achieve the scale benefits of technology reuse, aggregated purchasing power, and lean, standardized processes.
Her new role will allow us to further advance operating leverage.” Ms. Kharas is a Certified Accountant (U.K.) and has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Mumbai, India. Ms. Kharas will report to Tom Lesica, CEO Global Shared Services, and will be based at the company’s corporate office in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.
